Life in Iran Reviews

Full Reviews of Life In Iran: The Library of Congress Drawings

Center for Iranian Research and Anlysis Bulletin
Washington Post Book World

Washington Post Book World (February 20, 1994)

A series of 39 drawings created between 1978 and 1980 by Mohassess, an exile from the last years of Iran's Pahlavi regime. The sharply etched ink works are implicitly critical of both the Shah and the fundamentalist mullahs who overthrew him in the Revolution of 1979. The pointed caricatures were published widely in an Iranian newspaper and in the London-based political weekly, Iran Shahr. Mohassess left Iran in 1976 after the Shah banned publication of his work, and the national police harassed him. To make his satirical principles timeless, Mohassess has dressed his tyrants in the clothes and trappings of the Qajar period of a century ago. The drawing entitled "The Men Bent in Prayer to God and the Government Planes Arrived" captures the collision of persistent ancient ways and brutal modern technology, the aircraft is a Red Baron era biplane, and a Gatling gun perforates the backs of the devout. The depiction of Mohassess's suffering Iranians is reminiscent of Ben Shahn's Depression-era workers or Goya's peasants, and his compositions recall classical Persian miniatures.

Center for Iranian Research and Anlysis Bulletin (Vol. 10, #3, Spring 1995)

Life In lran, a series of drawings by Ardeshir Mohassess purchased by the Library of Congress, includes a helpful introduction by Bernard F. Reilly, Jr. and presents a unique version of life in Iran. Ardeshir Mohassess, Iran's greatest graphic artist and visual satirist, gives us his reading of Iran's most crucial time in modern history, the years surrounding the 1979 Revolution. On one hand, Mohassess illustrates the cruelty and meanness of the Shah's government, his despotism, tyranny, and the propaganda that he used; on the other hand, he also depicts the opposition's adolescence, blindness, and attitudes that belong to the past.

The cover, chosen as the best among the drawings, in many ways summarizes the whole book. An airplane packed with armed soldiers, one of them on top with a smoking gun, is flying over some bald, bearded old men dressed in nineteenth century costumes, who while prostrate and praying, have been shot several times. The caption (not on the cover) reads: The Men Bent in Prayer to God and the Government Airplanes Arrived. Militarization by the Shah, his usage of Western technology, his brutal killing of old people while they are praying, and the old-fashioned prayer of the men, their devotion to religion (they continue praying while being shot) show where Mohassess stands: he is on neither side, the eyeline of the drawing is neither on the level of the airplane nor on the horizon of the ground.

In order to evade censorship during his long career, Mohassess has had to adopt an indirect way to convey his messages, and the devices he conceived are powerful and well-fitted to the subject. This time, away from Iran and depicting the revolution, he made his drawings to be read more straightforwardly than before; previously he was sometimes cryptic and ambiguous. He uses old photographs for drawing, especially from the Qajar period, with many characters in Qajar dress. This device works because the Qajars and Pahlavis both used the same official sign consisting of the lion and sun, and while modern issues clearly show that the Pahlavis are the target of the drawings, the Qajar costumes also suggest that the problems have a long history. In spite of having a regional tone because of this dress, the issues are not limited to a specific time and region, and have a universal appeal.

Although Mohassess prefers his sketchy drawings to the more detailed and complex ones, in my opinion these minute drawings are preferable because the details are not here solely for aesthetic purposes but to convey more sophisticated meanings. As an example, I compare one drawing done in both ways: In Vaqaye Ettefaghiyeh (1972), there is a drawing titled: A Truck Entered a Tea House and One Person was Killed. Executed in sketchy and unsmooth lines, a car with three bare planks, suggesting a truck, is next to a part of a broken wall, a pot with a plant, and a broken pot with pieces scattered around. In front of the car there are four middle-aged men and on the corner, one old man stands in traditional dress. A portion of a chair on the left side and a frame at top right suggest the tea house. Another drawing in this series dated 1978 and titled The oil truck crashed the party and two people were killed is a detailed drawing with 59 people in it, each with a different expression, dress, and of different ages and from all walks of life. The driver is handcuffed and a policeman with his rifle is standing on a rock next to him. The two killed ones laying on the ground are bride and groom. A teardrop crosses the cheeks of a traditional music player, of a boy and an old man.

While the 1972 drawing refers to specific incidents and reminds us of car accidents, lack of safety, and upon further interpretation, the consequences of industrialization, the drawing from this book takes the issue onto a sophisticated and broader level. The oil truck suggests the country's wealth, the oil which brought misery to the nation, implied by such a diversity of people in the drawing. Changing the tea house to a wedding party also makes the problem more tragic.

With these superb line and ink drawings. Mohassess abandons some of his ghastly fantasy drawings and achieves his most sophisticated level in terms of style, technique, and manner of presentation. We don't see any more nightmarish creatures: decapitated, twisted bodies with long contorted tails. If he was previously under the influence of favorite artists such as Bosch and Goya, and their creatures were transformed in his 60s and 70s creations, so that he has been considered a Surrealist, in these drawings human bodies are drawn as such and we see social realism in the line drawing. Faces in his earlier works were formal, like those of traditional Iranian paintings, particularly Qahvehkhaneh paintings, which Mohassess was fond of, without any sign of feeling, anger, sorrow, or happiness. Now the faces are much more complicated: they are still blank, vague, and impersonal, but they radiate an intensity of personality. In many cases they remind us of Ben Shahn's pictures of depression-era farmers, as the introduction by Bernard Reilly mentions. These faces also show the influence of yet another favorite artist, Honord Daumier (1808-1879) who, not unlike Mohassess, was in close touch with political and social unrest in Paris, caused by the rapid development of an urban industrial society. Industrialization, modernity, and the use of technology, as we have seen on the cover, are also important issues in these drawings. Villagers Wait for Jets Numbered 16 & 17, Which Have Been Purchased for Them is a caption for a drawing of poor villagers with some fruit and flowers (to offer to the pilots?) and a couple of a banners among them, with two army personnel standing on the extreme left.

In one of the drawings, the king with his huge crown and sword is hanged while people are standing beneath him. The humorous caption reads: The King is Always Above the People. This great drawing and caption remind me of John Heartfield's photomontage, Kleiner Mann Bittet um grosse Gaben, which shows a big man giving Hitler, much smaller in size, thousand dollar notes from behind; the caption reads Millions are Behind Me.

Although this book is one of the greatest art works coming out of Iran's revolution, it has some imperfections. The title Life in Iran is too much for these drawings; they show only one aspect of life, the political one, and even in that narrow political sense only the gloomy side (The King is Always Above the People is the exception). Such a cynical point of view toward both the Shah and his opposition is understandable but that time was not entirely grim or dull. On the opposition side, although Mohassess wonderfully shows how its members were ridiculed by having ink poured on their heads, or the cruel way they were executed, or how they were demonstrating blindfoldedly, he forgets that they created one of the greatest revolutions in modern history and made the impossible possible. All opposition groups, whether religious or not, cannot be blamed for what happened afterward. They brought hope, life, and courage, but there is no positive sign of this in the drawing, even in the non-religious opposition demonstrations depicted: they are dull and dwarfed, and they deserve more than that.

While captions and titles are a very strong part of the book, some are not compelling. For example, in one drawing, in the presence of the king and some of the elite, two elderly religious men are captured and bound in chains, their feet imprisoned in a wooden device; the guard is saluting the king, and the caption reads immaturely: Sir, if we Kill Both of them Tonight, We Will not have Any Left for Tomorrow Night's Program. This caption might not seem too naive, but for those who were in Iran, it resembles high school bulletin board captions.

The book also suffers from a few inaccuracies; the introduction says that "the series is composed of 39 drawings" while there are only 31 drawings in the book; this might be a misprint or a miscount but an explanation for the lack of the other eight drawings would have been helpful. The introduction also mentions that the series was created over the course of three years, between 1978 and 1980. While no 1980 dated drawing is included, there are two drawings which are dated 1976. The dating problem is more than a misprint; The Body of the Martyred Imam is also to Arrive Tonight by Plane shows many mullahs blindfolded and shot, yet still lined up and waiting. This drawing, with such an arrangement, undoubtedly refers to the arrival of Khomeini in 1979. His huge welcoming ceremony and a possible clash at that time was an issue for weeks. This drawing is dated 1977, whereas the incident occurred in 1979; and also the terms "martyred Imam" and Imam in this context (using them other than the Twelve Imams) were not in common usage until 1978. The two 1976-dated drawings also seem to have incorrect dates: both show demonstrators being shot, and this did not happen until November 1977. I suspect that Mohassess usually did not date his works at the time of drawing; he did it afterward and did not pay enough attention. These imperfections in light of the whole work are not so crucial, but one cannot ignore them.

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